A Streetcar Named Desire

10 Beautiful Things

4. Reading old words

When I was a kid, I'd start a new story every day and plan out the entire thing in my head. The next day, I'd have a new story to write, a new plot, a new ending, and I'd file away the old one because this one, today's story, was better. I never wrote down what happened to the people in my stories because what was the point? I knew how the tale went, where it died. It never occurred to me that I'd go back in ten years and read those two or three finished pages without knowing the endings I once designed in my head because those pages were all that was left of the story.

If someday there was a Hollywood-style apocalypse and some fiery meteors or whatever rained down from the sky and burned up all the books, it'd be infuriating to find just the first three pages of Pride and Prejudice or The Hunger Games. Even if you had faith that the ending was happy, you wouldn't know what form that happiness might take. You wouldn't know if Elizabeth found a man with a fortune or if she ran off with a poor man. You wouldn't know if Katniss won or cheated or lost and somehow recouped, and the first pages would have you believe she ended up with Gale because that's all of the story you'd ever read.

I feel like I missed a lot by not writing those endings. Like I never found out the end at all, because I forgot.

But even if I could only have the first three pages of Pride and Prejudice, I'd take them, and read them, and let myself be furious, because three pages are better than none.

Anything technologically advanced enough can look like magic but words are magic. I don't think the world as we know it could've been built without words, especially not written words. Imagine a classroom where everything you're taught is oral. The teacher makes tiny omissions, judges what to say and what to leave out. The smallest edits build up over time until entire encyclopedias are lost.

I think of words as small chisels chipping away at ignorance. People who write aren't always kind or deserving or even right, but they're always remembered. We build off the things we know in textbooks. That's how we get new textbooks. It's how we record ideas that develop into products that develop into antibiotics and law systems and Cochlear implants. Even something as simple as a note on Twitter, a post on Tumblr, can roll like Atlas' stone down a hill, gathering momentum, until someone else takes up the climb. No matter how many times the stone rolls back down, we don't stop climbing.

I find it hard to read non-fiction because I find it hard to write it. This was true when I was younger too, because my small diaries and journals would always start off well-intended and devolve into adventures involving dragons and swordfights that never actually happened. It's true that some people live better than any plot could devise but many plots devise better people than most who actually exist. I think it's a way of working through ourselves like each word is a shovelful on the dig to China. Maybe it's futile to keep digging but something dies when we stop.

Fictional characters are always in some way how we see ourselves, or how we want to see ourselves. That's why people dress up as Harry Potter for Halloween and own all of the collector's editions of the books. The most famous and well-loved fictional characters have the same virtues we want for ourselves, while acknowledging the flaws.

For this reason, I go back and I read what I wrote at ten and twelve and twenty. Even if the ending's lost, even if the words are fumbling and uncertain, I can always find that element of need in the first three pages.

“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth” (Blanche).

l(a

I haven’t blogged in awhile. My theory on why is because I haven’t had much time to read anything. I’m always inspired by the books I read and usually I at least find an escape in my English class but unfortunately, we are on poetry. Poetry doesn’t do it for me. Or, if it does, it has to be spectacular. I think I did find a favorite poet though – E.E. Cummings.

My favorite poem by him is l(a. That is literally the title, it shouldn’t surprise you though if you know anything about E.E. Cummings’ style.

l(a

le
af
fa

ll

s)
one
l

iness

There it is, in all its beauty.

I think it inspired me, but in a weird way. I don’t know if I liked its shape or if I liked just simply finding out what it said. I think part of the figuring it out is just amazing: You get so happy! I understand, yes! But then it dawns on you that it is actually quite sad, but still you’re not sure if you’ve picked up all the pieces.

Or at least, that’s how it felt for me.

Well, I did a couple of things for myself. I picked a college because I wanted to go there and not anybody else. Not that anyone else was forcing me anywhere, but it’s cool to make such a selfish decision. I also didn’t do track this season which is…new. I just didn’t fit in and I never liked running sprints so, here I am now signed up at a boxing gym where I take boxing lessons and then lift weights and occasionally run on the treadmill watching the news. It is just different.

I think we should all shake up our routine every once in awhile. Track was amazing frosh year but I’m a completely different person my senior year. We all are from gradual changes and knowledge.

Good or bad.

Also, I think its okay to feel lonely because you find out stuff about yourself and others.

So, what is beauty but the course of life?

The Kite Runner

10 Beautiful Things

5. America

A friend asked me to help her choose a topic for a college essay. "I either write about academic accomplishments, a piece of music that inspired me, or how my culture affects me."

"Well," I said, "What is your culture?"

"It's America. My cultural background is full of fast food, fat people, bad politics, too much focus on Hollywood stars, and kids who have no education because they not only hate the standardized testing but they don't have the money to pay for college."

And I said, "But what about the good things? Hamburgers at 2 a.m. Yuppies who drink Starbucks while complaining about corporate takeover. Where else can you pass a guy through the primaries who thinks economic recovery means selling himself as a bobble head doll? I think that's our culture. It's being able to tell the president where to shove it on national television. It's being able to choose to go to college despite the wishes of your parents, your money problems, because if you work hard enough it will happen. It's the ability to choose who you marry and what you worship, if anything at all."

And it is beautiful to me because some people get screwed over but in the end, where a person ends up is a product of their starting point and their actions. I know of no other place where a girl may grow up saying, "Someday I will be the president."

The USA began as a bunch of misfits and pissed off religious followers. Is it any wonder the lady who said "I'm a witch" may become a governor? Is it such a leap to imagine a New York where a mosque of the religion followed by the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Centers, may someday stand not a block from that site?

All questions of morality and ethics aside, I find I can't disbelieve that such things can happen here. I believe anything can happen here. I grew up being told that those numbers and letters I memorized in school could some day lead me to the White House. Given effort, determination, and a bit of talent (if I was lucky), I could be a rock star, a housewife, a general, a president. And given that I believe in choice above anything else, it makes sense that America is beautiful to me.

"If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar" (Hosseini).

This I Believe

10 Beautiful Things

6. Choice

A week ago I was asked to write an essay on the topic "This I Believe". No other guidelines, no suggestions except a word count. 500-600 words. How, I asked, can a person possibly sum up their entire belief system in 600 words? Every day we wake up and do things according to what we believe. We write essays, take stances, think, all based on the things we hold to be true. For very religious people, perhaps this is easy. They can sum up their beliefs in one word, a name, really. But what about for those people who don't know what they believe? What about those people who never thought about it in words, only in feelings and actions?

Thinking about what I believe in was the hardest thing I've ever done. I believe in so many things. I believe in people, that no matter how horrible a situation might seem, someday it will not be so horrible. That things will always get better.

I believe in beauty found both on magazine covers, and in nature. I think the only real beauty is the one we ascribe to things, to people. I believe my mother is one of the most beautiful people in the world. I believe my best friends are the most beautiful people.

I have found that there is nothing a person cannot express in words, so long as she has the right words and the right approach. Some things can't be said straight out. That's why we have books, to lead us to revelations that would never be the same when said in plain words.

All these things make up a part of my system, my philosophy. I do not believe in a God but I believe in something that we won't ever understand, some web that lies beneath the surface that no one can see or feel. I believe in things I cannot understand, and things that I never want to. But all the same, is that the most important part of my system? The belief in the unknown?

I decided that no, my greatest belief has always been the cause of all these other things. The reason that I do not believe in God, the reason that I believe in words and the mysterious: choice.

I think one of the most beautiful things is the ability to choose. A painter chooses his colors, as a writer chooses her words. A politician chooses to sign the bill, and an activist chooses to boycott a product. In the end, the force behind all of these things--even the force that compels us to give up this force--is choice. There is nothing immortal except what we choose to make so. To me, that is beautiful.

"I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. Armed with reason, he can see two sides and choose: He can be divinely wrong. I believe in man's right to be wrong" (Allison and Gediman 19-20).

7. All of the Above

When something disappears from your life, that is when you realize what it is worth. Even the small things have the potential to mean something and mess up a sacred routine. Driving to school with a cold, I realize how sad I am that I can no longer sing in my car. I enter my first class of the day and find myself a little less cheery than normal. When I argue with my parents before leaving my house, I sit in my European history class distraught instead of getting to talk about my favorite subject. Small things in the scheme of life but so is the first bite of salad for the girl who is overweight.

Last week was a hard one. Of the many things that made it melancholy, I injured my foot. I believe it is a metatarsal fracture. Whatever it is prevented me from a weeks worth of running and not being able to participate in two meets. Then, on Friday I got sick. I almost feel like this sickness resulted from my attitude. My Labor Day weekend was one spent in my bed with the occasionally Google search or book to keep me company.

Now, I'm not trying to complain. What was a great resultant of such mishaps was something I noticed yesterday. My foot was still throbbing but I buckled up and went to cross country practice. My passion for the sport needs to constantly be re-lit and yesterday with rain drizzling on everything and band practice right after, I wasn't quite in the mood for it.

I went though with hopes that maybe, I can still succeed this season. The mood was drastically different and following through on such hopes and expectations was harder than I thought it would be on this day.

Oh, the same people were there and most were their normal selves.

Except for a friend of mine. I hesitate to put any adjective like 'good' or 'great' friend in front of my description of our relationship. I don't really know anything about him except for his best time on the cross country course. I do know that he is quite the joker and every time I go to practice, he is always talking to everyone and having a good time. He actually would bother me occasionally with punch lines taken a little to far or the occasional personal bubble invasion.

Yet, there he was, sitting on floor with his head in his hands.

I felt uncomfortable without his normal exuberance and somehow - wrong.

I didn't know what to say to him.

I don't think I would know what to say to my best friend had that been her - let alone this guy I only knew in passing.

Then you notice the small things and wonder what the heck you are doing - sitting there in air conditioning with the chance to do something.

Then when you push everyone out it is quiet the thin line between getting angry at anyone coming in or getting sentimental because they cared.

But, if you tried to do something in kindness then so be it. No one will be angry at you because you tried.

Perhaps, you did something great for someone without even realizing it.

So, keep smiling because to me, that is beautiful.

Bless Me, Ultima

10 Beautiful Things

8. Falling asleep to the sound of rain

When I was a kid my parents would take us on family vacations. We left in the early morning to avoid traffic but I was never awake then. I remember my mother picking me up, wrapped in my blanket, and carrying me out to the car. I lay half-awake, my head pressed to the glass window, not seeing anything but darkness but hearing the movement all around me. My brothers climbing into their seats, toys clattering. My parents speaking in hushed voices and the ignition humming. Then the bump of the curb as we backed out of the driveway.

All these things lulled me to sleep. Then, a few hours later I would wake when the car pulled into a rest stop. While my parents led my brothers to the restrooms, I curled on the seat and listened to the quiet.

The best times were when I woke to a gray sky and a thousand droplets a fraction of an inch from my face. Just glass between the world and I. Sometimes I counted those drops and pretended each was a family like mine. The smaller ones were people all alone, but they eventually drifted into a larger drop and became a big family.

Other times I lazed between consciousness and sleep, listening to the rain hit the roof. It seemed endless and impossible that water should fall from the sky. With nothing to hold it up, no one to sprinkle the moisture onto the earth below, and still rain fell. Every time I fell asleep to the sound of rain, it felt like being cradled in the hands of a mystery. And I guess that's the only time I ever believed in a god, when there was no explanation for something so beautiful and it didn't seem to need an explanation. It just was.

"'There are many gods,' Cico whispered, 'gods of beauty and magic, gods of the garden, gods in our own backyards-but we go off to foreign countries to find new ones, we reach to the stars to find new ones'" (Bless Me Ultima 237).

The Lovely Bones

10 Beautiful Things

9. Dry Leaves

There are no leaves in Arizona. There are stubby green things that yellow and fall off in a carpet of crackling wildfire-risk, but there are no leaves.

I think if everything in the world died and I was the only one left, I would miss leaves the most. On vacation to the East Coast in autumn, the trees were orange and red and yellow as if on fire. Then when the leaves fell, people walked on them. A leaf would become brown and wrinkled, desiccated, and shoes would crunch it into the pavement. Once it wasn't bright and golden, it was worthless. All the life was gone from it. There is nothing pretty about death.

And yet there are monuments to the dead. Great bronze statues immortalizing those who have gone before, who have done something that no one else did. Names, carved in neat lines into metal and stone. That is death, too. So why don't we shy away from it?

I remember freshman year of high school, the buses would stop at two schools. At the second, I sat in my seat staring out the window. All the trees along the side of the bus pick up lane shed their tiny green stubs at the same time. The gutters clogged with little bits of yellow from the flowers-that-aren't, to be swept away over the weekend. Then the dead things would fall again and the cycle repeated itself.

When there was wind, it picked up the leaves. They danced in eddies, sometimes falling, sometimes drifting away, somewhere else, somewhere not here. Even though they were dead, they went places. The world picked them up again.

Then in other places, where the trees dropped their leaves in great piles to wade through. Those leaves barely moved in the slightest breeze. A lot of those leaves are never picked up. They grow brown with age and disintegrate slowly until the winter snows cover them. When the snow clears again, they are gone. All things dead get buried eventually. No one remembers the leaves of the last autumn, only this one.

I think dry leaves are beautiful, strange as that may seem to those who acquaint beauty with glamour and makeup. But leaves on a tree are pretty, things to be smiled at and admired from afar. Dry leaves are ground beneath the soles of hundreds of shoes. Dry leaves are buried by snow and dry up in the sunshine. They become uninteresting and flat, slivers of the past trampled beneath the present. But they are broken up and become dirt and ash and fertilizer. We walk on dry leaves. We breathe them in. All the time we sweep them away into neat piles, we are creating order out of chaos. Life from the bones.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it” (The Lovely Bones 320).